Hedges and Sacco’s collaboration tells both a small intimate story of individuals caught up in a cycle of poverty fueled by oppression and disdain from the ruling classes, and the very big story of that oppression and exploitation.

Agree with conclusions/politics or not, the act of looking at these particular “sacrifice zones” alone forces one to think through how much injustice comes to pass, and to what degree we are to tolerate/promote the continuation of such practices/outcomes.

I’ll say that Hedges conclusions are a little further afield than I’d probably take them, and that I do not share his enthusiasm for the Occupy movement as such the profound turning point in this kind of debate as he asserts (I’d say that it’s feasible that this model may change how people across racial/economic divides organize themselves versus the powers that be but that we have to see what persists), but the kind of mixed media approach that Sacco and Hedges take makes one take a fresh look and reassess one’s own opinions and fact base.